Percival Everett - The Body of Martin Aguilera

Maggie was doing well. At the truck, she struggled to get the lower part of the body high enough to go over the side wall. She heaved and Martin rolled in. The tarp came away from his face. Maggie saw the maggots and the mud-caked neck. Lewis reached quickly and covered him.

Maggie walked absently toward the cabin. Lewis followed her.

“Maggie?”

“I’m okay. I just need to sit down.”

She sat on a stump to the side of the door. Lewis leaned against the house.

“Want me to tell you what I think?” Lewis said.

Maggie nodded.

“I think the army or somebody let something loose up there, chemicals or something, and it’s killing everything. There’re no animals up there, not even bugs.” Lewis was starting to cry. “The trees are dying, Maggie. The only thing up there is a fence.” He rubbed at the mark on his hand.

Maggie stood and hugged him.

He took a breath and let it out slowly. “Let’s go.”

They did not speak. Lewis drove and thought about the blemish on his hand. Would it become a wound like the ones he had seen on Martin’s legs? Would Ignacio and Ernesto get them too from being up in the canyon? Would everyone who had contact with the dead man develop them? Maggie? Maybe you had to touch something to become infected. Perhaps he’d already been exposed by picking up the squirrel. He was mad at himself for having let Maggie handle the corpse. Laura had even been close to him. He had no idea of the extent or range of this thing. It could have been in his imagination. But the squirrel was real. The absence of the animals in the forest was real; it had even scared young Ernesto.

Lewis didn’t know what he was doing, where he was taking the body. He was hungry, needed to eat. His brain needed food. He didn’t have cash, but he had credit cards. He pulled into a gas station/fast food place and killed the engine.

“We have to eat something,” Lewis said. He took out his wallet and handed her a credit card. “One of us has to stay and make sure no one comes near our cargo back there. Try to get something that’s not too disgusting.”

“Hot dogs, something like that?”

“Whatever.”

Maggie got out and walked into the store.

Lewis pumped the gas.

Lewis could easily imagine getting to the Capitol steps with Martin’s body and being put away for being a crazy man. He could dump the body onto the desk of the editor of the Santa Fe newspaper and say, “Feature this: NERVE GAS THREATENS THOUSANDS.” He’d always wanted to say, “feature this,” but it sounded stupid. It still did. He topped off the tank and put the nozzle back. He looked inside and saw Maggie at the counter. The cashier read the pump through binoculars.

Lewis looked at the highway. A state trooper passed by. He wondered if they were on the lookout for an elderly couple, a black man and a Japanese woman, driving a Ford F250 pickup with a dead Mexican in the back. He pictured Peabody and his men trying to drive across that arroyo in the van, but then he realized that the ground had soaked all the water from yesterday’s rain and so the arroyo was now no more than a trickle. By now, they had found the empty grave and were swearing and loading pistols.

Maggie came back. “I got you a jumbo dog with the works,” she said.

“Did you get me a coke, too?”

“Yep.” She pulled a can from the bag and handed it to him.

He popped the top and took a long drink. “Ready?”

“Are you okay?” Maggie asked.

“No. Should I be?”

“Where to?”

“I really don’t know. What do you think of the newspaper? We could dump it in the city editor’s office.”

Maggie seemed to consider it.

“The television station?”

“That might be better,” she said. “I don’t know why.”

“Well, we can’t stay here all day. Get in.”

They returned to the highway. “I found your truck at Camel Rock,” Lewis told her. “The state police have probably towed it by now.”

“What’s that on your hand? You keep rubbing at it.”

“Nothing.”

“Lewis?”

“Nothing, I said.” He switched on the radio. A woman whined a country song.

Maggie killed the radio. “What is it?”

“I think it’s going to be a burn like the ones I saw on Martin’s legs. I think we’re in trouble.”

Maggie focused on the road.

“I think things are really bad, Maggie. I mean really bad.”

Maggie was crying again.

Lewis stopped the truck and held her for a few minutes.

She sat up straight and looked at the hills. “You know how long I wanted to come live here? A long time. This was my dream place. No one to bother me, no relatives nearby.” She laughed.

“I know what you mean.”

“Yeah.”

Lewis cleared his throat. “Look at it this way; at least we’re old.”

“Yeah.”

He started the truck.

They passed through Española. Lewis looked in his mirror and saw a brown van. Again, he thought that there must be many brown vans in the state. But this one rammed into the back of them.

“Shit,” Maggie said.

“Buckle your belt,” Lewis said.

The van hit them again, then tried to pull even with them. Lewis turned his truck left and bumped them. He swerved off the highway onto a rough, but paved road. The van overshot the turn.

Lewis hoped he hadn’t made a mistake. He hadn’t made the turn with any plan in mind. He thought he could find a dirt road that would give them trouble, the ground clearance of the van being lower than his truck.

Maggie held on, one hand on the dash, the other on the strap over her door. The van was behind them again. Lewis spotted a dirt road and took it. He did put some distance between them. He didn’t hear the report of the weapon, but his outside mirror shattered.

“Get down, Maggie. Jesus Christ, they’re shooting at us.”

Maggie leaned over on the seat. Lewis slouched down. The truck bounced wildly because Lewis couldn’t see to miss the bumps. He wanted to just stop and say, “Shoot me.” He was just so tired of it all. But he wouldn’t give up. The bastards were going to kill everybody.

The road threw them high. Lewis sat up more to see the road better. Maggie looked up. She smashed forward into the dash and bloodied her lip.

“Stay down, Maggie!” Lewis shouted.

Maggie looked at him, like she was lost, confused, like she wanted to say something.

Maggie slumped over the seat. Lewis accelerated through a tight curve. The van swayed. The rain had not made the road muddy and it wasn’t slick, but because of it there was also no dust. Nothing was working to advantage. Another curve came up suddenly and he took it on two wheels. The van didn’t take it, it skidded, turned sideways and began to roll. It came to rest upside-down. Lewis kept going for a few minutes, then stopped by a small lake. He realized that he was on Indian land; he’d come to Pito Lake from the back side.

He turned to Maggie, held her head in his hands. He saw the hole where the bullet had passed through the back window. She was unconscious. Her hair was filled with blood. His fingers were wet with her blood. He could hear her voice, but she wasn’t speaking. He didn’t know if she was dead.

Why had he turned off the main road? He cursed himself. He cried. He hugged Maggie and felt the life leave her. He felt heat lift from her and she was left cold in his arms. He wrapped his fingers about her arm, so small, so frail it had seemed, and he recalled how tough she was and he yelled at her, told her to wake up. He couldn’t remember how to breathe, didn’t know if he was doing it right. His eyes opened wide and he saw the light of the sun reflected off the water. His head hurt. His leg throbbed. His heart ached. He turned Maggie’s head and looked at her face. Her open eyes scared him and he gently closed them. He put his head back on the seat and lowered his lids against the sunlight. Two bodies now. Two bodies and he was still alive, all his damn fault and he was still alive. He tried to start the truck, but it wouldn’t crank. He didn’t care. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Exhaustion overtook him and he went to sleep.